Not to put too fine a point on it, the most recent interactions with my cousin have ended in disappointment. She leaves for Switzerland next week and we're not going to meet up before then. Shortly after my last posts in June, she left the country for the U.S. to her previous home in Sedona to do whatever she needed to do.

Ironically, after all that talk about helping and being there, nothing came out of my asking her to help me get my computer fixed. She mentioned her brother could definitely help me with that, but she didn't do anything to further that. She didn't jump at the chance to help me in the rare occurrence of me asking for help when in a disadvantageous situation (mind you, it's not the first time).

In July, the problem had grown to the point that I was asking her when she'd be back, leading off with whether she could help me get my computer fixed. We had a short exchange, during which she never mentioned helping me with my computer, and the content of our exchange had me calling her out that she didn't want to help, so nevermind.

Her then saying she'd help was the most insincere offer to help imaginable. It was so insincere that I can't even call it begrudging. A begrudging offer to help is more sincere than what she offered. A begrudging offer to help is sucking it up and realizing one has to do something.

Her saying she'd help was more like "uh yeah, whatever". I didn't even want her help after that and my former Chinese teacher hooked me up in two days with a repair shop that was half a block away from me. I pass it just about every day.

That was just coincidence. She knows what neighborhood I live in, but she doesn't know my address and didn't know the shop she called was so close to me. But that coincidence seems to underscore how useless my cousin was in this matter. Even if she tried, she couldn't do better than my Chinese teacher did without even trying.

My cousin contacted me two weeks after she said she'd be returning to Taiwan, long after my computer was fixed, giving me her brother's number and saying he was available to help me with my computer. She could have done that from Sedona in June, she didn't need to wait to come back to Taiwan if she wanted to help me.

I'm not close or in contact with her brother, but we're on good terms. There's no awkwardness between us. Even though I posit my relationship with him through her, he's still my cousin and we've never had trouble relating as such. If she sent me the same message in June, I'd have called him.

Needless to say, I blew my cousin off. I was disappointed in her. I wouldn't be surprised if she is disappointed in me for whatever reason. For blowing her off. For just responding, "That's OK, I got it fixed already. Look me up if you're in town". No, we weren't going to meet up before she left.

Mind you, we've disappointed each other in the past and we've always gotten over it. It doesn't directly affect any future contact we have, although I have doubts about whether we will have any future contact.

My funds won't last beyond next May and I doubt she'll visit before then. I have some reserve, but I don't plan to exhaust every penny, and I want to leave a certain sum for my landlord, her uncle, to make up for any expenses resulting from my disappearance, if it comes to that.

Basically I don't hold anything against my cousin for not wanting to help. In this matter, that is. She has been helpful in the past, in matters more convenient for her I suppose. If I profess to hope to cut karmic connections between us, then of course I can't hold anything against her. She did me a favor by not helping by . . . just lessening.

If she eagerly and effectively helped, I would have been happy and satisfied and thought of her in a certain positive, possibly attached, light. As she did it, I realize I can be just kind of "meh" about her despite our past closeness.